Forget making a better mousetrap.
Matt Marsden says he makes the world’s best “fish tree,” a shop-built take on the practice of tying a cement block to a Christmas tree and dropping it into a lake to attract fish.
Marsden’s patented product, America Fish Tree, is made of solid polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, that he says will last for years. Its plastic “branches” slide easily into the “trunk,” a plastic tube. They provide fish with shade and cover, he said.
While a real Christmas tree makes an unwieldy fish attractant, Marsden says his fish tree, which has a handle and lanyard, is easy to pop in and out of the water.
“Fish will move into it real quick,” he said. “My product is for somebody like myself. I’ve got a place on the lake, but I don’t have a lot of time to fish.”
Serious fisherman spend a lot of money on gear that works, he said. So Marsden thinks there’ll be a market for his three models, which range in price from $109.95 for the smallest to $169.95 for the largest.
“I get a lot of calls from professionals,” said Marsden, who said there’s a “whole culture” of professional fishermen who catch crappie, mostly in the Midwest, but around here, too. Weiss Lake, just south of Fort Payne, Ala., Marsden said, is “one of the best crappie lakes in the whole country.”
Marsden has given his product to pro anglers in hopes that they’ll recommend it and use the American Fish Tree to win tournaments.
“I’ve got state wildlife agencies that are interested in it,” he added. “With this, you can go place it and forget about it. You don’t have to keep going back year after year after year.”
Marsden plans to show off his American Fish Tree in July at ICAST (the International Convention of Allied Sportfishing), the world’s largest sportfishing trade show in Orlando, Fla.
American Fish Tree sounds like a product that could succeed, said Tripp Bencho, a sales associate in the fishing department at Sportsman’s Warehouse in Chattanooga.
“If it works better than brush piles, then it could be really profitable,” said Bencho, who’s on the bass fishing team at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Marsden was inspired to create his fish tree after he bought a competitor’s model and decided he could build a better one, based on three decades of experience working with industrial cooling towers through his business, TMI Cooling Towers LLC.
He’s spent about $100,000 on American Fish Tree, including $18,000 on patent lawyer help and about $40,000 for the computer-controlled machining tool that makes the fish trees. It’s operated by Signal Machine Inc., in Fort Oglethorpe. Marsden keeps the finished product in a Soddy- Daisy warehouse.
The cooling tower business funds American Fish Tree for now, Marsden said, but the latter has been more fun.
“One business makes money; one business spends money,” he said. “I’ve been in the cooling tower business for 32 years, and the [media’s] never called me before.”
Another inspiration was a heart attack two years ago at age 50 that Marsden says was brought on by overwork.
“I don’t just want to wake up one day at 60 and tell people what I would have done, should have done – but I never did it,” he said.
Contact staff writer Tim Omarzu at tomarzu @timesfreepress.com or www.facebook.com/MeetsForBusiness or twitter.com/meetforbusiness or 423-757-6651.